


A Streetlight for the Stars

by coyotesuspect



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 01:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3631677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotesuspect/pseuds/coyotesuspect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Ronan dreams about Adam. One night, he accidentally brings one of those dreams back with him. Set after <i>Blue Lily, Lily Blue</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Streetlight for the Stars

The Friday after Persephone's funeral, Ronan gets everyone drunk. It’s supposed to be a wake, though he doesn't tell anyone it's a wake. But there's beer and whiskey and he puts the right music on and he makes sure everyone is at Monmouth at the same time. It's not, technically speaking, just a wake for Persephone, but for Kavinsky and his dad and Noah and the man Jesse Ditley whose death Blue seems to feel personally responsible for. 

Gansey gives Ronan an odd look when Ronan puts on the music and starts passing out beers, clearly unsettled by Ronan acting the part of doting host. But Ronan gives him the evil eye and Gansey shrugs in response and settles down by his still smashed reconstruction of Henrietta. Noah sprawls out next to him, content to watch the four of them drink. 

Even Adam lets Ronan shove a beer into his hand after one protest of “You know I don’t...” 

“Submit to peer pressure, man,” says Ronan, knocking Adam on the forehead. “Everyone’s doing it.”

“This tastes terrible,” says Blue. She’s curled on the head of Gansey’s bed, hugging one of his pillows. “Can’t you afford something better?” 

“This is the good stuff, maggot. You just haven’t developed your fucking palate.” 

“Oh, my _palate_. I should have known I was missing out not spending my teen years getting wasted.” 

Adam laughs softly. 

“Now, Jane,” reprimands Gansey. “Play nice.” 

Ronan and Blue make identical disdainful noises, and then scowl at each other. Sometimes Ronan thinks he and Blue are too alike. 

“She’s like three feet tall,” says Ronan, stalking to the kitchen/bathroom. “I think I can defend myself, Gansey.” 

He comes back with a bag of potato chips which he throws at Blue’s head. She shrieks and raises her pillow in defense, spilling half her beer on Gansey’s bed and bouncing the bag onto Gansey’s head. 

Ronan smiles serenely over the chaos. 

“Can you sit down?” asks Adam. “You give me a headache when you look that smug.”

“Then maybe you should look at something else and stop checking me out, Parrish,” says Ronan, but he stops and goes to sit on Gansey’s bed next to Adam. 

Adam’s mouth makes a delicate moue around the lip of his beer bottle and Ronan watches from the corner of his eye. He probably shouldn’t be this invested in watching Adam drink, but it makes Ronan feel like he’s going to vibrate right out of his skin to see Adam’s clever hands around the bottle, his mouth at the rim, the movement of his throat as he swallows. 

“Shitbag,” says Adam, but he lets Ronan lean against him. 

It turns out neither Blue nor Adam can handle their liquor. Blue because of inexperience and because, as Ronan says, “she’s barely fucking taller than the bottle”; Adam because he’s constantly exhausted and one beer actually puts him straight to sleep. 

He falls asleep against Ronan. They’re still sitting on Gansey’s bed, and Adam’s head is tucked against Ronan’s shoulder. He can feel Adam’s breath on his neck, and he’s one long line of heat against Ronan’s side. Ronan extracts his arm gently and drapes it across Adam with an expression of cool disinterest. Not that it matters, he realizes. No one’s paying any attention to him or Adam. Blue’s staring into her empty bottle and Gansey is looking at Blue and Noah’s flat on his back, staring dreamily at the ceiling like he’s been drinking. 

“Do you think something’s going to happen soon?” says Blue quietly. 

“Something is happening right now,” says Ronan. “Parrish is cutting off circulation to my leg.” 

He makes no attempt to move. 

He knows what Blue means though. Nothing’s happened since the day at the cave, but it feels like something will happen soon, like the wind picking up before a storm. They can see the dead leaves swirling and they can smell the oncoming rain. 

Blue starts to cry. It's gentle and silent and it strikes Ronan as distinctly un-Bluelike. But it’s a wake, so he’ll let it pass. 

Gansey stands up at once and puts his arm around her. Their faces are close together, Blue's tear-streaked and crumpled, Gansey's bright with concern and beaming comfort. Adam's not awake for Ronan to see him react to this. 

Gansey straightens up.

"I'm going to walk her home," he announces to the room. The room right now is just Ronan. Adam's curled asleep against his side and Noah's gone to wherever Noah goes. 

Ronan tips his beer bottle to Gansey in salute. 

"I don't need you to walk me home," says Blue fiercely, scrubbing at her tears. "I am perfectly capable of walking home under my own power."

Gansey looks at her.

"Please?" he asks softly. 

Ronan studies his leather bands. This doesn't seem like a conversation for him to overhear, and he's a little pissed at Gansey for turning him into a witness. He slides a look at Adam instead. It’s less dangerous to watch Adam while he sleep – he’s less likely to get caught. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Ronan sees Blue give a tiny nod. 

By the time they leave, Noah’s still faded out, and Adam is still asleep. Ronan sits there for another few minutes. A truly tragic dirge is playing. He's going to have to get up eventually. He realizes he's being kind of creepy, even though Adam's the one who fell asleep on _him_. 

He pulls away from Adam slowly, careful not to wake him, and climbs off the bed. He considers doing something like drawing a dick on his forehead or sticking his hand in a cup of water. But looking at Adam asleep makes his stomach twist like vines are growing up inside him. Adam looks _serene_ , eyes closed, cheeks a little flushed, mouth slightly open. He looks a little ridiculous, like most people do when they’re asleep, but in a way that sparks tenderness rather than cruelty. He looks more like a real human boy than he usually does, less like the strange, wondrous creature he’s becoming. 

Ronan covers his face. He’s fucked, he thinks. He’s not used to feeling fucked. A few months ago, there wasn’t enough space inside him to feel fucked. 

He walks back to his room, not unsteadily, but with the alcohol burbling inside him. When he lies down, his mind drifts automatically to Adam’s long body sprawled out in the next bed, how his breath had felt against Ronan’s neck. He grips his sheets tightly, feeling anger break like a wave over him. He wants to break something. He wants to wake Adam up to see what he would do. He wants to go back and lie down next to him, pretend they both fell asleep. 

Chainsaw flaps her wings and caws anxiously, sensing Ronan’s turbulence. Ronan sits up and opens his window a notch, just enough to let in the autumn chill and the smell of woodsmoke. He rests his head on the glass and watches his breath fog it. He digs his fingers into the sill. From her perch, Chainsaw caws her concern. 

“ _Kerah? Kerah?_ ” 

“It’s fine,” says Ronan, and he lies back down and tries not to think about Adam. 

He doesn’t do it on _purpose_ , but it’s not surprising when he finally does fall asleep and dreams about Adam. 

It’s nice. They’re in Cabeswater, in high summer, the kind of summer day that’s clear and warm. The leaves glitter green and chatter in the wind. Adam’s taken off his shirt. He's sitting by a stream. Ronan sits down next to him.

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to. Adam turns to him like he's been expecting him and touches Ronan's face and kisses him. Ronan holds his wrist and kisses back, dream logic and his own unwillingness to examine the situation propelling him forward. Adam hums into his mouth. And then things shift forward. It's no longer summer. They're at the Barns and Adam is still kissing him. Adam pulls away and takes Ronan's arm, then leans forward and bites the leather straps around Ronan’s wrist, teeth scraping delicately against the skin on Ronan’s wrist as he does. Ronan shivers violently. 

There’s a yell and a crashing noise and Ronan jerks awake. And hits his head against Adam’s. 

“Fucking Christ!” he yells, clutching his head.

“Ronan?” says Adam, leaning over him. Adam isn’t wearing a shirt, Ronan realizes dimly, and he’s straddling Ronan, knees bracketing Ronan’s hips. 

Ronan swears again and tries to scramble out from under Adam, but he’s still sleep-stupid and all the movement does is unbalance Adam enough to force him off the bed, and as he falls, Ronan falls with him. 

They land on the ground as a tangle of limbs, and Monmouth reverberates with the second crash in the space of a minute. 

“Ronan? Are you okay?” That’s Gansey, sounding shaken, and a moment later, Ronan’s door jerks open. 

“Oh Christ!” shouts Gansey, leaping back from the door and covering his eyes. 

“What the hell is going on?” says Adam’s voice from the next room, thick with sleep. A few seconds later, he’s standing at Gansey’s shoulder, looking into Ronan’s room. 

Noah drifts over too.

“Oh wow,” says Noah, looking from the Adam on the floor next to Ronan, to the Adam standing beside Gansey. “There are two of you.” 

***

“A simulacrum,” says Gansey, once they’ve found a shirt for the dream Adam. 

“No one knows what a simulacrum is, Gansey,” says Adam. He’s staring at his otherself. Ronan watches him warily, trying to gauge his reaction. 

“It’s a copy,” supplies Gansey, all helpfulness, “but an imperfect one.” 

“I was joking,” says Adam, voice flat. “I understood from context.”

He’s still staring at the dream Adam. He looks terribly pale. 

Gansey gives him an uneasy look, and then clears his throat.

“So,” he says, to Ronan. “You were, ah, dreaming about Adam.” 

“What the fuck do you think I was dreaming about?” growls Ronan. “What the fuck did you wake me up for anyway?” 

“You mean why did I trip and fall on a beer bottle?” says Gansey, puffing up like a bird. “I don’t know Ronan. Why would I do that?” 

Ronan bares his teeth at him sulkily. 

Gansey ignores him and returns his attention to dream Adam. He rubs at his lower lip. 

“Do you think Cabeswater would protect him too?” he asks. “It could be helpful.” 

“No,” says Adam. “He didn’t make the bargain. I did. And he’s not me. He’s… Ronan’s.” 

"I'm myself," says dream Adam, defensive. He smiles at Ronan. "No offense." 

"None taken," mutters Ronan, refusing to look at him. 

“I’m going home,” says Adam – the real Adam – still with the same flat, emotionless tone. "You two figure out what to do with him."

*** 

Adam comes back the next day, a very bemused Blue in tow. 

“Where is he?” asks Adam. 

“Where is _who_?” asks Blue. She puts her hands on her hips and frowns at all of them. She looks remarkably like her mother. “What is going on?” 

“He’s in Noah’s room,” says Gansey, hands tight around a cup of coffee. Neither he nor Ronan slept last night after dream Adam’s arrival. It had taken a lot of coaxing to get dream Adam to stay in Noah’s room and not keep trying to sit on Ronan’s lap. Ronan thinks he might take to standing for the next few days. 

“Noah’s room?” says Adam. He gives Ronan a hard look, but Ronan ignores him and busies himself with stroking Chainsaw’s head. Ronan’s decided not to participate in this conversation. 

Gansey sighs. 

“Adam,” he calls. “Blue and, er, Adam are here.” 

Dream Adam practically glides out of Noah’s room, looking sprightly and refreshed in a way Ronan has never seen the real Adam be. 

Blue looks between Adam and dream Adam. She sits on Gansey’s bed and puts her chin in her hands and looks at them some more. Her brow furrows. 

“Oh,” she says, when she gets it. She sounds sad. It’s not the reaction Ronan expected, the lecture about consent and respect and boundaries and because Ronan can control his dreams, he definitely shouldn’t dream about having sex with his _friends_. She glances at the other Adam and then she looks at Ronan. Ronan looks back and neither of them look away until they both do. 

“What are we going to do with him?” she asks.

All the boys – except dream Adam, since he mainly just likes to look at Ronan – raise their eyebrows at her. 

“He’s not staying with _me_ ,” snaps Blue. “We’re already stuck with Gwenllian.” 

“We could give him to Helen,” muses Gansey. “She’s been threatening to kidnap Adam for ages.” 

Ronan barks out a laugh, but neither Blue nor Adam look amused. 

“What about Cabeswater? Or the Barns?” asks Noah. He pokes at dream Adam’s nose, and dream Adam smiles back at him. 

“What? So he can jump me every time I go home? No fucking way.” 

“I’m surprised Henrietta isn’t overrun with supermodels,” says Blue thoughtfully. “If Kavinsky could do this too.” 

There’s a pause, and then Ronan says, “I don’t know if supermodels were really his type.” 

He thinks about Prokopenko though, and he wonders a bit. It feels weird to talk about Kavinsky. His death isn’t the gaping maw that Ronan’s father’s was, nothing could be. But it still sits with him uneasily. He doesn’t feel responsible, but he does feel a little sad. Ronan isn’t a person who feels _sad_ about things. 

“We should ask him what he wants,” says Gansey. He turns to dream Adam, and says in his kindly, elder statesman voice, “Where would you like to stay?” 

“I like it here,” says dream Adam. He shuffles closer to Ronan and squeezes his bicep. Ronan’s jaw tenses in response. 

Adam makes an odd noise in his throat. 

“He can stay with me,” says Adam. 

“No,” says Ronan. 

Everyone looks at him. Even Chainsaw caws a question. 

“Why not?” demands Adam. “He can’t stay at Blue’s. You’ve vetoed Cabeswater and the Barns. He can stay with me until we figure this out.”

Because, thinks Ronan, no one who’s ever said _treat others as you’d like to be treated_ has ever hated themselves. He doesn’t know what he would have done with a double of himself during that dark time he loathed himself, but he doesn’t think it would have been anything _good_. Adam’s seemed… better recently, less fractured, more centered. But Ronan’s still wary. 

He doesn’t say anything. Neither does anyone else. 

“Fine,” says Ronan. “Whatever.” 

He goes back to petting Chainsaw. Dream Adam makes a disappointed noise. 

“Maybe I can get him to take some of my shifts for me.” Adam’s mouth turns up wryly at his own joke. 

“Do I have to?” says dream Adam. 

“Yes,” says Ronan, at once. He and Gansey had learned last night that dream Adam, while perfectly agreeable, would only really listen to Ronan. 

Dream Adam pouts. It’s an incredibly un-Adam expression, and it kind of gives Ronan the creeps. 

“Can you go, uh, take a nap?” Ronan asks. He hears something that sounds suspiciously like a giggle, and he makes a mental note to pull Blue’s hair later. 

“Okay,” says dream Adam. 

Dream Adam is as blithely good-natured as Matthew and Aurora. Ronan wonders why that is. Prokopenko was no angel, and Chainsaw is no dove. Maybe he should just be glad he didn’t bring back a different Adam from his dream. Even now, not all his dreams are nice. 

“I just want you to know,” says Gansey, in his most earnest-sounding and therefore his most pompous voice once dream Adam has left the room, “that this doesn’t change anything. You’re still a brother to me.” 

It takes Ronan a moment to parse this out, and when he does, he punches Gansey hard in the shoulder, digging in with his knuckles. 

“Oh fuck you,” he says, but fondly. 

“You mean to say,” says Blue, her voice lightly scandalized and clearly mocking, “you’ll still be Ronan’s friend even though he’s _gay_? How very noble of you. How very un-Republican of you, actually.”

“Hey!” protests Gansey. He pauses and blinks owlishly, and then he says magnanimously, “Politics has nothing to do with it. It’s immaterial to the issue.” 

Blue snorts and kicks at him. He’s just out of reach, so her foot just swings for a couple seconds. She doesn’t seem heated up enough to scoot forward and kick him properly. But Ronan helpfully punches him in the shoulder again all the same. Blue gives him an approving nod. 

“Politics is immaterial to the issue,” mimics Blue. “How very straight and white and male of you.” 

“Don’t forget rich,” says Adam. He’s settled on the floor and spread a textbook out on his lap. When Ronan glances at him, he notes that Adam doesn’t actually seem to be reading, just staring at the page. “Straight and white and male and _rich_.”

“Of course,” says Blue. 

She leans down from the bed and pats Adam on the head. He smiles up at her. Ronan watches them, trying to gauge whether or not he’s jealous. He doesn’t think he is. He’s never talked to Adam about Blue – or to Blue about Adam for that matter. But he’s gotten the impression that whatever was happening between them in the spring isn’t happening anymore, and what remains is deep, residual fondness. Which is good. Someone should be deeply fond of Adam. 

“Alive, too,” says Noah. He hugs his knees to his chest and smiles at Gansey. “I still like you though.”

“Thank you,” says Gansey gravely. “Now, if the rest of you are quite done harassing me, we still haven’t solved the problem at hand.” 

“Nice dodge. Very smooth,” says Blue, smirking. 

Gansey sticks out his tongue at her, and then rubs his lower lip. 

“But really,” he says, beginning to pace. “I don’t know if we can just keep him…” 

It surprises Ronan, his friends don’t seem particularly bothered by dream Adam. If anything, he’s a pleasant diversion. A challenge that needs solving, yes, but not a challenge that’s going to result in anyone’s death or the total restructuring of their world as they know it. 

He finally lets himself sit down, and listens as Gansey starts to brainstorm a million plans. 

***

He still goes to St. Agnes the next day. There’s no real reason not to go to church the next day. It feels weird to know there’s not one, but two, Adams in the apartment above. Ronan’s distracted throughout the service, glancing upward as if one of them might miraculously phase through the ceiling. Declan hisses at him to pay attention, but he’s no worse than he usually is, so Ronan graciously ignores him. 

He lingers after the service, waiting for Matthew to finish getting hugs from the little old ladies who adore him and for Declan to stop telling the priest how astute the sermon was before the three of them go to lunch. Ronan has grudgingly conceded to lunch after church for the past couple weeks; Declan’s an asshole, but he’s still showing up. 

“Ronan! You’re here!” says Adam’s voice, and Adam’s long arms wrap around Ronan’s chest and Adam’s lips press against his shoulder and Ronan goes very stiff because he can tell just from the tone of the voice that this is definitely not Adam hugging him. Adam Parrish has never sounded that delighted to see Ronan. Adam Parrish has never sounded that delighted about anything. 

“Parrish?” says Declan, done sucking up to the priest and managing to combine both incredulity and disdain in one word. Ronan would deck him if he weren’t currently being held uncomfortably tightly. 

He takes a deep breath. 

“I’ll be right back,” he says.

He manages to unhook himself from dream Adam and holds him by the arm. Dream Adam smiles at him dotingly and leans into him. Declan makes a face like he’s just stepped on a slug. The urge to deck him gets stronger. 

“Not a word,” snarls Ronan at Declan. “Not a fucking word.” 

He drags dream Adam up the stairs, not saying anything. Dream Adam, for his part, seems content to cling to Ronan like a swooning heroine. Ronan can’t quite believe he dreamed up an Adam like _this_. 

“Jesus,” says Adam, sitting down on the top step when he sees Ronan coming up with his double. He looks pale with relief. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Did anyone see him? Did he do anything?” 

“I’m right here,” says dream Adam petulantly. “I just wanted to say hello to Ronan. He had church today.” 

Adam covers his face. He looks mortified. 

“Just Declan,” says Ronan. “And Declan’s a fucking shithead anyway, so who the fuck cares what he thinks?” 

Adam removes his hands from his faces and grimaces at Ronan. 

“What?” bristles Ronan. “Ashamed to be fucking seen with me?” 

“That’s not.” Adam grimaces again and breathes in deeply through his nose. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Fine. You wanna talk about why he was fucking running around in the first place?”

“He got out!” hisses Adam. “I can’t just hold him prisoner! I’m not – ” He stops, upset. 

Ronan wants to be mad – he _is_ mad – but he can’t really be mad at Adam, because none of this is really his fault. And asking Adam to physically overpower his own double would be a fucking monstrous thing to do. 

“Well, don’t fucking let him out again!” Ronan shouts, and he stalks back down the stairs, still simmering with fury. 

***

He’s watching Matthew start on his second burger after church when it hits him: dreams need to eat too. All they’ve done by having Adam watch his dreamself is give him another Adam-sized mouth to feed. 

“I’ve gotta go,” says Ronan, getting up. 

“Mwehre?” says Matthew from around his sandwich. 

“Grocery shopping.” Ronan pats him on the head. 

“It can’t wait?” says Declan, voice strained. 

“No. Give Matthew a ride back to his place, yeah?” 

“Ronan,” says Declan, half-rising from the table. “We need to – ”

But Ronan’s already gone. 

Half an hour later, he’s back at the church, at the top of the stairs leading to Adam’s room. His hands are full so he kicks at the door until Adam opens it. 

“Of course it’s you,” says Adam, eyes lined with tension. “Were you trying to kick it down?” 

“Parrish,” grunts Ronan, immediately assured it’s the real Adam. Only the real Adam could manage to make his face so blandly judgmental. 

He shoulders past Adam and into his tiny apartment. Adam closes the door quietly behind him then makes a less quiet exasperated noise. 

“Where’s your doppelganger?” asks Ronan.

“Gansey’s watching him. I have a shift soon.” He looks at the bags Ronan’s holding. “What are you carrying?” 

“Groceries,” says Ronan, and he puts the bag on the counter and starts unpacking. Peanut butter, bread, canned soup, a bag of oranges, frozen chicken tenders. Nothing extravagant, nothing Adam could really fault him for. 

“What?” says Ronan, at Adam’s expression. “You’re eating for two now. I’m providing for my offspring.”

Adam’s mouth flickers. Almost a smile. The tension lines dissipate slightly. 

“Aren’t _you_ technically the mother?” he says. 

“Whatever.” Ronan throws a candy bar at Adam, aiming for between the eyes. He almost hits his target, but Adam’s faster, and he snatches the candy bar out of the air. 

“How much do I owe you for this?” he asks, voice all A-student polite. 

Ronan glares at him. Adam’s usually better about accepting things from him than from Gansey, which Ronan understands in a weird way. Gansey doesn’t expect anything from you when he gives charity – there are no strings. But even so, when Gansey gives you something, you get the feeling he’s doing it because he sees the best in you and you want to be the best for him. Ronan doesn’t give a shit. He likes Adam at his worst. But Adam’s gonna be a little shit because they fought. 

“You’re already paying me back up here,” says Ronan, tapping his temple. 

“Oh, _gross_ , man,” says Adam, but there’s no real heat to it. And, after a moment’s contemplation, he opens the candy bar and eats it. 

Ronan smiles at him smugly. 

Adam flips him off and starts humming something in response. It takes Ronan a moment to place it, and when he does, he shoves Adam hard. 

“Come on!” he snaps. 

Adam laughs, a glorious, golden thing, and Ronan gets briefly lost in the shape of Adam’s mouth before he remembers he’s fucking _annoyed_ at him.

“Dream a Little Dream of Me?” he demands. “Seriously?” 

“Seriously,” says Adam, his thin mouth turned up wryly at the edges. “It seemed apropos.” 

“ _Apropos_! Don’t Richard Gansey the third me,” sneers Ronan. “I’ll sing the murder squash song.” 

“You will not!” 

“I will,” says Ronan viciously, and, because he never lies, he sings it. Until Adam kicks him and then Ronan has to wrestle him to the floor, and they’re both going to end up with scabs again. 

***

He sees Adam again that night, when Adam stops by Monmouth. Adam’s alone. 

“Gansey still have your twin?” Ronan asks. 

He’s been feeding potato chips to Chainsaw. She caws at Adam like she has the same question.

“Yeah,” Adam looks around as if Gansey and dream Adam are hiding behind Gansey’s bed. “I thought they’d be here.” 

Ronan shrugs. 

“Well, they’re not.”

“Thanks. I hadn’t noticed. Has he texted you anything?”

Ronan mimes vomiting but gets up to dig up his phone from beneath a pile of clothing. Sure enough, there’s a text from Gansey. 

_Took Adam 2 to gelato. Tell Adam Prime we’ll be back ~9_

Ronan relays the message. 

“Ah,” says Adam. He shoves his hands in his pockets and examines the model of Henrietta. Ronan watches him. He can’t tell if things between him and Adam are a normal level of weird or a weird level of weird. He still hasn’t figured out how Adam feels about his dream double. How he feels about what is now a very obvious crush. 

“ _Ah?_ ” says Ronan, mimicking Adam in a falsetto. 

Adam sneers at him, and goes back to examining the town. Rain and the dark are thumping against the windows of Monmouth Manufacturing, and the effect is one of being hemmed in. Ronan hasn’t seen Noah all day, and he’s suddenly very aware of how alone he and Adam are. 

“I think Gansey and Blue think I already spend too much time with myself,” says Adam eventually. 

“Hey man, in a case like this it still counts as masturbation” says Ronan, making a crude gesture with his hand.

“Is that what you’d do if you had a doppelganger?” says Adam, with withering disdain. 

Ronan flushes. 

“Sure, why not? Once in a lifetime opportunity.” 

The abrupt image of Adam making out with his dreamself fills Ronan’s mind, and his stomach goes liquid and hot with jealousy and desire. 

Adam looks unhappy. 

“Something else for you to dream about tonight, I guess,” he says. 

“That’s not what they’re like!” snaps Ronan immediately. He flushes again. He hates this. “Not, not _usually_.” 

“What are they usually like?” asks Adam, soft and dangerous. He’s finally looking at Ronan. 

“Fuck you. I don’t have to tell you anything,” says Ronan. He crumples up the now empty bag of potato chips and aims it at the trashcan.

Adam’s still looking at him.

"There's a dream," says Ronan, agitated. He's not sure why he's talking. He's never been the kind of person who felt the compulsive need to fill silence with words, but there's something about Adam's steady, curious look that's sucking the words right out of him. He wants to tell Adam what his dreams are like. He wants Adam to listen. 

"A dream where you – " He swallows hard and stops mid-sentence, and stares stonily at the ground. 

"A dream where I," prompts Adam, still with the steady, curious look.

“Touch my tattoo,” grinds out Ronan. Somehow it’s more embarrassing, more damning, than Adam knowing Ronan has sex dreams about him. 

“Oh,” says Adam. 

Ronan looks at him. Adam is finally, finally, blushing, just barely, but he’s fair enough that the blush is obvious. He’s also standing a lot closer to Ronan than he was before. Ronan stares back at him with frank curiosity. Adam reaches his hand out slowly. Ronan feels like he’s – not like he’s _dreaming_ , but like he’s just woken up and is still watching his body from outside of it, a trapped spectator. 

With the pads of his fingers, Adam touches the tendril of tattoo that curls just above the collar of Ronan’s shirt. His eyebrows draw together slightly. Ronan takes a deep breath. Neither of them move.

Then Adam turns sharply on his heel and darts out of Monmouth Manufacturing, letting the door slam behind him. 

Ronan deflates slowly, feeling like he’s finally settling back into his body. It’s not a good feeling. He feels like his skin is too hot and too tight. He wishes he knew if Adam’s pissed at him over this dream shit. 

He wishes he knew if Adam likes him back. 

"He doesn't know yet," says Noah. "But he likes that you like him." 

Ronan turns around. Noah's sitting on the pool table. Ronan wonders if he's been there the whole time. 

Probably. 

"I didn't say anything," says Ronan. 

Noah shrugs, guileless and disinterested. 

"Didn't you?" he asks. He jumps off the pool table. 

"Hey," he adds brightly. "Do you want to play? I'm getting better." 

***

“Can you undream him?” asks Adam the next day during lunch. Noah’s on babysitting duty while the rest of them have school, and Gansey’s on the phone with Malory. Adam and Ronan sit on a bench and watch him pace and talk. It’s the first time Ronan and Adam have spoken all day. Ronan kind of suspects that’s why Gansey’s decided to call Malory in the middle of the day. Gansey’s not exactly subtle.

“What do you mean? _Undream_?”

Adam flicks Ronan between the eyes, having apparently decided to pretend the night before never happened. Ronan grabs his wrist, then quickly reconsiders and lets go. He hasn’t forgotten, and he won’t pretend. 

“I mean dream he’s back inside your head,” says Adam, as if it’s the most obvious idea in the world.

Ronan thinks about it. 

“I’d have to be near him, for it to work.” 

“I’m sure we can keep him from assaulting you in your sleep, if that’s what you’re worried about,” says Adam dryly. 

“Fuck you,” says Ronan. He pokes at the ground with a stick. “Would it be like a murder, do you think?” 

Adam considers this. He tilts his head back and looks up into the sky. The clouds are fat-bellied and gray. Ronan slides a glance at Adam. In the washed out, afternoon light, Adam looks strange and luminous. Like stained glass, Ronan thinks, of an Old Testament angel. His heart contracts down into his stomach. 

“I don’t think so,” says Adam slowly. “He’d still be inside of you, right?” 

“Yeah,” says Ronan. “I guess.” 

Adam’s quiet for a long moment after that. He scuffs at the line Ronan drew in the dirt with his shoe, and Ronan swats at his leg in response. They spend a brief moment tussling until Ronan gets Adam in a headlock. 

“Don’t look so smug,” says Adam, when Ronan lets go. “Not everyone’s dad taught them how to brawl.” 

“Well, it would’ve been pretty counter to your dad’s purposes,” says Ronan before he really thinks it through. They’re going to get into a fight now for sure; even Ronan knows he should know better than to make jokes about Adam’s abusive dad. 

Adam goes still for a moment, but then he untenses with a small sigh. He tugs at the Aglionby tie around his neck, loosening it. 

“I guess it would have been,” he says. He looks up moodily at the sky some more, and then adds, “I keep thinking Persephone would know what to do with him. But she wouldn’t, or she wouldn’t say if she did.” 

His words trail out miserably towards the end. Ronan doesn’t say anything. He remembers sitting next to Adam on the stoop of 300 Fox Way the afternoon Persephone died, neither of them saying anything, but Ronan leaning just enough into Adam that Adam would know he was there for him. 

Ronan doesn’t know if Adam’s had the chance to grieve for Persephone. It seems like the kind of thing Adam wouldn’t let himself to do – it’s Blue’s loss, not his – that kind of dumb, overly noble thinking. He thinks about saying something stupid like, “You’re allowed to grieve for her.” But it feels like a Gansey thing to say, and coming from Ronan, it would sound like a lie. 

So he just leans into Adam again, both of them studiously looking at the ground. 

“There’s like six million other psychics in that fucking house though,” says Ronan. “We could ask one of them.” 

“Sure,” says Adam. “I’ve got a couple hours after school.” 

***

Gwenllian is delighted with dream Adam. 

“You’ve dreamt out the mongrel and made him a puppy instead!” she cries. 

Next to Ronan, Adam stiffens. 

“No accounting for taste,” says Ronan with a shrug. He puts his hand on Adam’s back and shoves him back towards the hallway. Gwenllian has dream Adam trapped for now. 

Maura is out with the Gray Man and Blue is at her shift at Nino’s. That leaves Calla the only person they really _know_ in the house. They find her in the weird-ass cat room, staring moodily at a spread of cards, a sweating drink at her elbow.

“Coca Cola shirt,” says Calla, fixing Adam with a beady look as soon as he and Ronan walk in. “There are two of you.” 

“It’s his fault,” says Adam, pointing at Ronan. 

Calla looks over Ronan and snorts. “Of course it is. So what do you want?”

“You’re the psychic,” sneers Ronan. “Shouldn’t it be obvious?” 

Calla raises one sharply defined eyebrow at him and grabs her tarot deck. She shuffles with an efficient briskness and holds the deck out to Ronan. 

“Take a card,” says Calla. Her eyes are red and her face is blotchy, but her expression is mean and hard. 

“No,” says Ronan. 

Adam rolls his eyes. 

“Oh, come on,” he says, and he takes a card instead. 

They all look at it. The Lovers.

“Well that seems pretty on the nose,” says Adam, voice desert dry. 

Calla fucking _cackles_ like the Wicked Witch of the West. It shouldn’t be surprising, Ronan thinks. This is a fucking coven. 

“There you go,” says Calla. “There’s your answer.”

“That’s not exactly helpful,” snarls Ronan. 

“That’s not exactly my problem,” says Calla. “But thanks for the laugh.” 

She leaves the room without a look back. Adam and Ronan look at each other without really looking at each other – sidelong glances and not meeting the eyes. What the fuck is Ronan supposed to do with this? He should have known talking to a psychic would be useless. 

“You could dream a version of yourself,” says Adam, sounding uneasy. Probably thinking about the last time he saw Ronan dream up his own double. 

Ronan thinks about a dream Adam and a dream Ronan, off together in Cabeswater, a kind of latter day Garden of Eden. The idea is unsettling. He doesn’t like the idea of someone with his face wandering around somewhere with someone with Adam’s face. 

“Maybe,” he says. 

“Do you have any constructive ideas?” snaps Adam, sounding very Blue-like in his exasperation.

Ronan shrugs. 

“Great,” says Adam. “I have work. Have fun with your boyfriend.” 

And he leaves the same way Calla did. 

Ronan waits for a moment, vaguely hoping Adam will come back. He doesn’t, and Ronan retrieves dream Adam from Gwenllian, who’s barely willing to give him up, and forces them to listen to a long song before she does so. Or forces Ronan at least. Dream Adam just seems benignly amused. 

It’s just him and dream Adam once they finally make it out of 300 Fox Way. Ronan realizes abruptly that this is the first time he’s really been left alone with dream Adam. 

Dream Adam smiles at him and then reaches out and runs his hand over soft fuzz of Ronan’s head. The back of Ronan’s neck prickles. And then dream Adam reaches down and takes his hand. 

“Do you want to go for a walk?” asks dream Adam. 

“Uh, sure,” says Ronan, feeling like saying no would be the equivalent of kicking a puppy. Or yelling at Matthew. 

It’s pleasant, but there’s an edge of something wrong beneath, like smelling the beginnings of rot in a flower garden. This isn’t Adam; this isn’t Adam who wants to hold his hand and walk down the rain-dark street with him. Ronan’s not even sure that’s what _he_ wants from Adam. 

He wonders if his dad intended to dream his mother up, or if she had been an accident, a serendipitous gift from his subconscious. Did his dad marry his mother because he didn’t know how to put her back? 

He thinks about the card Adam drew, the Lovers. A naked man and woman, hands almost touching, standing in a garden, nothing like love as Ronan knows it. 

“This is nice,” says dream Adam, and he snuggles up against Ronan. It takes all of Ronan’s willpower not to break into a run.

He can’t give this Adam what he wants. The real Adam is right; dream Adam needs a Ronan of his own. 

And then it occurs to Ronan how to make that possible.

***

“I know what to do,” says Ronan. 

Adam slides out from under the car he’s working on. There’s a smear of black on his cheek bone. It makes him look like some old warrior, sharp-boned face covered in warpaint. Ronan eyes him appreciatively.

“So you did figure out something constructive,” says Adam. He sits up, reaching for a dirty rag to wipe his hands on. He narrows his eyes and it only enhances the effect of feral warrior. Ronan feels his pulse pick up a bit. “Maybe. What’s your plan, Lynch?” 

Ronan tells him, and when he’s done, Adam nods. 

“We can do it at my place,” says Adam. He looks at his watch. “My shift’s over in an hour.” 

“Great. I’ll be outside.” Ronan kind of wants to stay and watch Adam some more, but he’s left dream Adam in the car and he’s not really sure he should be left unsupervised. Ronan didn’t exactly dream him any common sense or ability to defend himself. 

It’s a long hour in the car, filled mostly with Ronan fending off dream Adam’s advances. He sings the murder squash song though, and at least dream Adam seems taken with it. Which is perhaps the most damning proof this is Ronan’s dream made manifest rather than an accurate reflection of the real Adam. 

Adam waves at Ronan when he leaves the garage, but doesn’t come over to speak. Ronan waits for him to get into the Hondayota and then follows him back to the church. 

Neither of them speak as they go up to Adam’s room, dream Adam the only one making noise as he hums tunelessly and leans into Ronan. 

Ronan sets down the bottle of whisky he brought with him on Adam’s counter. 

“Do you need a glass?” asks Adam. 

Ronan responds by unscrewing the lid and tipping the bottle back into his mouth. His mouth and throat burn.

“Guess not,” says Adam. He eyes dream Adam distastefully. “You two should lie down.”

Ronan nods, not trusting himself to speak. He takes dream Adam by the arm and pulls him towards Adam’s bed. They’re going to have to be touching for this to work. Ronan feels like he’s buzzing. 

He kicks off his shoes and lies down stiffly. Dream Adam lies down next to him and presses his mouth against Ronan’s neck, right at the pulse point. Ronan lets him, but he doesn’t move. He’s uncomfortably aware of Adam’s eyes on both of them. 

“It might help if you weren’t fucking watching.” 

“Sorry,” says Adam. His voice sounds off, too small or too tight. Ronan shifts up slightly to peer at him suspiciously. But Adam’s already turned the chair away and hunched his head over his Latin homework. 

Ronan watches him for another few seconds. But other than the tenseness of Adam’s shoulders, there’s nothing to see or interpret. Dream Adam makes a small, disgruntled noise and Ronan lies back down. He has no fucking clue how he’s supposed to fall asleep in this situation. 

He hears the real Adam stand up. 

“I’ll give you some space,” says Adam, and he leaves the room. 

Somehow, that does make things a little easier. Ronan feels less tense. The rain patters against the roof and window, soothing and constant. Dream Adam presses in closer and Ronan closes his eyes and allows himself to imagine, for a moment, it’s the real Adam, the two of them in Adam’s narrow bed, clasped together like hands in prayer.

Ronan’s breathing starts to even out, and he soon falls asleep with his arm looped loosely around dream Adam’s waist. 

When he dreams, he’s back in Cabeswater. His dream has that strange, elastic feel that omens powerful dreaming. He settles down by the stream he first found dream Adam by and gets to work. 

First, he closes his eyes and dreams Adam again. He pictures the two of them in Adam’s bed, thinks about dream Adam’s sweetly bovine smile, his uncomplicated affection. He dreams that Adam dissolving like mist in the sunlight, returning to the forest inside Ronan’s self. 

“Ronan?” says Adam’s voice. 

Ronan opens his eyes, and swears a delighted swear. Adam’s beside him – the dream Adam – looking faintly puzzled. 

The dream Adam looks around and his eyes widen. 

“Oh,” he says. “We’re here. I like it here.” 

Ronan pats him on the knee. 

“Good,” he says. “Because you’ll be staying.” 

Dream Adam looks troubled. 

“Will you be staying, too?” he asks. 

Ronan bites his lip. 

“Kind of,” he says. “Give me a minute.” 

He leans back and closes his eyes again. He dreams himself. Blue eyes, shaved head, dreams tattooed across his back and over his shoulder. It’s tricky. He’s not used to thinking about what he looks like. 

When he’s finally satisfied with how this dream double looks, he has to thinks for a moment. He needs to give this Ronan more than his face and body. 

He puts in him his loyalty and he puts in him his fierceness and he puts in him his refusal to lie and he puts in him whatever it is he feels for Adam. It’s not a perfect Ronan, neither in terms of being a perfect replica nor in terms of being a perfect human, but it’s a matched set for this dream Adam. Someone who can love and be loved in return. 

“There’s two of you,” says dream Adam, and Ronan opens his eyes. His own double smiles back at him. 

“Yeah, but not for long,” says Ronan. He stands up and looks down at his creations. He talked about it with Adam at the garage, and they’re pretty sure they won’t actually be in Cabeswater – or at least not the physical one. There’s the Cabeswater even Blue and Gansey can walk into, and there’s the Cabeswater inside Ronan’s head. His and Adam’s doubles should be safe in there. 

“Have fun, kids,” he says, and he steps away and up, so that suddenly it’s more like he’s floating above the scene, a movie watcher at a theater. Dream Adam and dream Ronan blink at each other, looking like the first humans on the earth. Then dream Adam takes dream Ronan’s hand and they both smile at each other. They look sickeningly happy. They look, thinks Ronan, extremely young. 

They stand at the same time, and they walk deeper into the forest together.

***

Ronan wakes with a start, plummeting back into his body immediately, no time to see who else in the room. 

“Is there…” he says, propping himself up on his elbows and blinking away the sleep. He stills feels the whiskey roiling inside him. 

“It’s just me,” says Adam, voice shaky. “That was… really weird. He just… faded into you.”

Ronan scrubs a hand across his eyes. So Adam had come back inside before the dream was done.

“I’m just glad it was fucking simple.” 

There’s a long, weighted silence. Ronan can sense Adam watching him again. His skin prickles. 

“Is that what you want?” asks Adam softly. It’s a late-night voice, a secrets and confessions voice. “Something simple?” 

Ronan glares at him and sits up. 

Ronan loved his father. Loves his father. And he loves his mother, but he can’t imagine choosing a dream over the real thing. He doesn’t want a robot with Adam’s face. He wants the rioting sea, not an empty vessel to pour himself into. 

How could that be what his father had wanted?

“When,” Ronan spits, “have I ever fucking wanted something _simple_?” 

Adam stares, and then, slowly, he begins to smile. For the second time that week, he reaches out and touches Ronan’s tattoo, just above the collar. 

He keeps his hand there this time. 

Ronan trembles. He bracelets Adam’s wrist with his hand. 

“Ronan,” says Adam, and then catches himself and swallows whatever he was going to say next. Ronan thinks dimly that he can feel Adam’s pulse, quickening in his wrist. Or maybe it’s his own pulse he’s feeling. 

He takes a deep breath and lifts Adam’s hand upwards. He presses a kiss to Adam’s palm and then to the base of his hand, where the veins of Adam's wrist delta out. He smells mist and moss.

“Oh,” says Adam, voice tremulous and breaking. 

Ronan looks at him through his eyelashes. 

“You were jealous,” he says, everything clicking neatly into place. His smile curves against Adam’s wrist.

“I was not,” scoffs Adam. 

“Liar.” 

“Shitbag.” Adam pulls his wrist out of Ronan’s grasp, but he doesn’t pull away. He palms Ronan’s face instead and looks at him. 

Ronan’s heart thrums. He’s dizzy. He doesn’t need anything else ever again, he thinks, all his want coalescing to this point – Adam’s cool hand on his face, Adam’s eyes locked on his face. 

“You need something, Parrish?” asks Ronan, a little more breathlessly than he’d like. 

Adam smiles, rare and fond and genuine. 

“Move over, asshole,” he says. 

And he climbs into the bed with Ronan. 

_End._

**Author's Note:**

> Eight-thousand words, I ask myself. How the fuck did this end up being almost eight-thousand words? I only started reading the first book _last_ Saturday! 
> 
> Anyway! Title is a (slightly tweaked) line from the Andrea Gibson poem _Birthday_. Thanks for reading. :)


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